WATERTOWN : 


THE    SITE    OE  THE  ANCIENT    CITY    OE 


NORUMBEGA. 


RIVER  FLOWING  THROUGH  A  LAKE 
INTO  THE  SEA' 

VINLAND  OF  THE  NORTHMEN 

«0|jietl  cljaei-IijslraAjol)  by 

Geo.  Davis,  Civ-n  Eij^rjeer. 


^IJE  Of  LEIf'S   fl0lJSE5, 


CoH^««£T    Hoelv 


■^     C     I     T    ^^' 


REMARKS 


BY 


EBEN  NORTON  HORSFORD 


—  AT  THE 


—  OF  THE  — 


WATERTOWN    HISTORICAL    SOCIETY 


NOVEMBER  18,  1890. 


INTRODUCED   BY  THE   PRESIDENT,   REV.   DR.   RAND, 

mr.  horsford  spoke  as  follows: 

Mr.  President,  and  Ladies  and  Gentlemen  op  the  Historical  Society: 
I  have  to  thank  you  for  an  election  to  Honorary  membei'ship  m  the 
Watertown  Historical  Society.  If  anything  could  add  to  the  pleasure  which 
this  distinction  gives  me,  it  is  that  it  carries  with  it  an  assurance  that  you 
look  with  interest  and  a  measure  of  gratification  on  the  work  of  archaelog- 
ical  research  in  which  I  have  been  engaged.  It  has  been  my  privilege  to 
find  that  the  seat  of  your  society  is  also  the  seat  of  the  earliest  city  in 
America,  north  of  the  ancient  Spanish  Possessions.  I  cannot  better  show  my 
appreciation  of  the  honor  you  have  conferred  upon  me  than  by  giving  you 
in  somewhat  new  relations,  and,  in  a  measure,  anticipating  my  next  publica- 
tion, a  brief  summary  of  what  I  have  discussed  under  the  title  of  the  "Defences 
of  Norumbega." 

There  are  three  questions  involved: 

1.  Was  there  a  city  of  Norumbega  ? 

2.  Where  was  it  ? 

3.  Who  were  its  inhabitants  ? 
In  reply  to  the  first: — 

WAS  THERE   A  CITY  OF   NORUMBEGA: 

I  shall  leave  with  the  Secretary  for  the  use  of  the  Society  for  a  few  days 
a  collection,  not  yet  published,  of  photographic  facsimiles  of  majis  and  charts 
bearing  on  this  subject.  On  some  twenty  of  these  maps,  which  I  have 
placed  for  convenience  on  a  single  sheet,  going  back  to  records  of  1520,  you 


Z  WATERTOWN    THE     SITE    OF     NORUMBEGA. 

■will  see  the  name  Norumbega,  and  in  most  cases  a  little  device  near  it,  in- 
dicating that  the  name  applied  to  a  city,  as  it  was  called.  What  does  such 
a  display  of  coincident  cartography  mean  ?  My  interpretation  is  this  :  Un- 
less there  was  a  conspiracy  extending  through  more  than  a  century  and  a 
half,  among  the  exploiters,  geographers,  and  map-makers  of  most  of  the 
prominent  maritime  nations  of  the  globe  —  some  of  whom,  as  Spain,  Portu- 
gal, England,  France,  Holland  and  Italy,  were  rivals  in  the  spirit  of  discov- 
ery and  acquisition  of  new  countries,  there  must  have  been  a  Norumbega. 
Is  such  a  conspiracy  conceivable  ? 

A  few  years  ago.  Rev.  Dr.  Leonard  Woods,  President  of  Bowdoin 
College,  found  in  England,  a  manuscript  copy  of  a  communication  entitled 
"Western  Planting.''  It  was  written  three  hundred  years  ago,  at  the  instance 
of  Sir  Walter  Ealeigh,  in  the  hope  of  inducing  the  Government  of  England 
— i.e.,  Queen  Elizabeth — to  lend  the  Royal  patronage  to  the  encouragement 
of  a  grand  enterprise  for  taking  possession  of  and  settling,  by  Englishmen, 
a  country  in  the  Western  World,  known  as  Norumbega.  Of  this  country 
and  its  almost  fabulous  natural  resources  much  had  been  heard.  Sir  Hum- 
phrey Gilbert,  a  kinsman  of  Raleigh,  undertook  an  expedition,  one  of  the 
objects  of  which  was  to  find  the  country  —  and  its  principal  town.  It  was 
understood  between  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  Cecil,  Walsing- 
ham  and  others,  devotedly  loyal  to  the  crown,  that  a  chief  end  of  the 
enterprise,  if  not  one  of  the  most  important,  was  to  establish  for  England  a  sort 
of  Bermuda,  from  which  British  cruisers  might  issue  to  threaten  Spanish  gal- 
leons bearing  homeward  treasure  from  the  possessions  of  Spain  about  the 
Mexican  Gulf;  and  so  compel  Philip  the  Second  to  maintain  a  naval  force 
in  the  waters  of  the  Western  Atlantic ;  and  thus  prevent  the  threatened 
siege  and  invasion  of  England  by  this  powerful  Catholic  Sovereign.  This 
was  in  1583-1585.  The  rumbling  of  the  Spanish  Armada  had  already  been 
heard. 


WATERTOWN     THE     SITE     OF    NORUMBEGA.  6 

The  letter  was  written  by  Richard  Hakluyt,  a  very  learned  young 
clergyman.  In  the  course  of  the  letter  Hakluyt  presents  the  evidence  of 
the  riches  of  the  country,  in  its  climate,  soil,  fruits,  and  varied  productions  ; 
in  its  furs,  fisheries  and  mines ;  and  gives  the  testimony  of  men  who  had 
visited  the  country,  and  the  city,  and  who  had  seen  its  resources  in  material 
for  commercial  enterprise.  This  paper  was  first  put  in  print  some  years 
ago  by  the  Maine  Historical  Society,  and  edited  by  Dr.  Woods  and  the  late 
Dr.  Charles  Deane  of  Cambridge. 

Why  has  it  received  so  little  attention  ?  Mainly  because  of  the  adverse 
reports  and  opinions  of  Champlain  and  his  lieutenant  historiographers  as  to 
the  existence  of  the  city  of  Norumbega  on  the  Penobscot,  where  he  and 
they  had  expected  to  find  it.  And  yet  it  is  to  appear  that  while  Cham- 
plain's  maps  of  1612  and  1632  show  that  he  had  been  conducted  to  the  site 
of  Norumbega  on  the  Charles  (see  Purchas,  1613,  p.  628),  the  few  remain- 
ing dwellings  his  party  found,  were  ascribed  wholly  to  the  Indians.  He 
could  not  see  in  the  squalid  cabins,  which  he  figures  on  his  maps,  anything 
corresponding  to  the  city  his  imagination  had  pictured. 

I  hazard  nothing  in  saying  that  whoever  now  reads  "The  Western  Plant- 
ing" will  not  for  a  moment  doubt  that  somewhere  there  was  a  Norumbega. 

NOW  WHERE  WAS  IT? 

The  sheet  of  maps  to  which  I  have  referred,  and  the  numerous  others 
which  accompany  it,  will  show  you  that  it  was  on  a  river  which  has  borne 
a  succession  of  names.  It  was  first  called  the  Rio  Grande  by  the  Portuguese 
(1500-1504);  then  it  was  Anguileme  by  Verrazano  (1524),  —  the  trans- 
lation of  the  Indian  Mishaum — Big  Eel;  then  Gamas — a  corruption  of 
Gomez  (1526) ;  then  Sole,  on  Ulpius's  Globe  (1542);  then  AUefonsce  spoke  of 
it  as  the  River  Norumbergue  (1542-43) ;  then  it  was  called  Gathas,  or  Guast 


4  WATERTOWN    THE     SITE     OF    NOEUMBEGA. 

or  Gas  (De  Laet),  by  Champlain;  then  Mess-adchu-sec  —  (Rasles);  and 
before,  and  after  Rasles,  the  Charles,  the  name  given  by  Capt.  John  Smith,  in 
honor  of  his  Prince — Charles  I. 

Besides  all  this  muliplication  of  names  of  one  river,  there  were  other 
sources  of  confusion:  capes  and  bays  and  islands  along  the  coast  had  each 
borne  a  variety  of  names.  A  country  called  Norumbega  was  said 
(Parmentier)  to  be  near,  and  to  the  southwest  of,  Cape  Breton,  and  Lo! 
there  were  two  Cape  Bretons,  and  they  were  several  degrees  apart. 

But  there  came  a  time  when  the  fact  of  the  two  Cape  Bretons  was  rec- 
ognized and  made  clear,  and  by  a  man  whose  authority  could  not  be  called 
iu  question:  it  was  AUefonsce,  the  pilot  selected  from  all  the  officers  of  the 
French  Marine,  by  Francis  the  First,  to  accompany  Roberval.  This  French 
admiral  (also  spoken  of  as  Lord  of  Norumbega)  was  appointed  to  supersede 
Jacques  Cartier,  who  had  failed  to  find  a  passage  through  to  the  Pacific. 
Allefonsce  gave  the  latitude  of  the  southern  Cape  Breton,  and  pointed  out 
near  and  south  of  It,  as  already  remarked,  a  river  Norumbergue,  on  the 
banks  of  which,  some  fifteen  leagues  from  its  mouth,  he  found  and  described 
the  city  of  Norumbergue.  The  cape  and  the  river  and  the  city,  according  to 
Allefonsce,  were  in  the  43d  degree. 

Let  us  now  look  at  the  significance  of  this  determination.  On  a  known 
north  and  south  coast,  all  that  you  need  to  fix  the  absolute  geographical 
position  of  any  point,  is  the  latitude.  Allefonsce  gave  the  position  of  Norum- 
bega— spelled  variously,  as  you  will  have  remarked — within  less  than  a 
degree. 

But  after  Allefonsce  came  Thevet,  who  described  and  figured  the  city, 
and  observed  and  recorded  the  exact  latitude  of  the  mouth  of  the  Charles 
River,  at  Nantasket  Roads.  He  made  it  42  degrees  and  14  minutes.  The 
Coast  Survey  makes  it  42  degrees  18  minutes. 

Now  the  latitude  of  Nantasket  Roads  is  within  a  few  minutes  of  a  degree 


WATERTOWN    THE     SITE     OF    NORUMBEGA,  5 

of  the  latitude  of  Boston  and  of  Watertown,  which  is  about  42  degrees  and 
20  minutes. 

On  this  river  Norumbega — the  Charles — according  to  Allefonsce  and 
Thevet,  a  few  leagues  from  its  mouth,  was  the  city  of  Norumbega.  The 
river  runs  from  west  to  east  for  some  distance.  Where  on  the  river  was  the 
city  ?     We  may  look  for  traces  of  some  kind. 

There  are  remains  of  an  ancient  ditch,  forming  a  loop  at  the  mouth  of 
Stony  brook.  At  the  loop  was  what  was  called  a  fort.  There  was  a  settle- 
ment and  a  fishery  there,  and  they  were  mentioned  by  Thevet.  I  found 
the  evidences  of  them  five  years  ago.  The  fort  has  nearly  the  same  latitude 
as  Watertown.  It  is  the  most  considerable  ancient  work  on  the  river  west  of 
us.  The  mouth  of  Stony  brook  is  some  thirty  feet  above  tide-water.  Here 
at  Watertown  is  the  limit  of  tide-water.  Here,  in  your  town,  are  wonder- 
fully-preserved reuiains  of  stone-walled  docks  and  wharves,  of  a  massive 
stone  dam,  a  walled  basin  and  fishway,  and  extended  stone  walls  reaching 
on  either  side  of  the  river,  more  perfectly  on  the  left  bank,  with  some  inter- 
ruptions, neai-Iy  to  the  United  States  Arsenal,  a  mile  below.  The  office  of 
these  river  walls  in  straightening  the  channel,  and  so  deepening  the  waters 
in  the  docks  at  high  tide,  is  obvious,  on  a  little  reflection.  The  wall  on  the 
north  shore  may  be  seen  for  a  few  minutes  going  westward  after  leaving 
Faneuil  Station,  on  the  Boston  &  Albany  Railroad. 

The  stone  dam  gave  rise  to  the  fall  which  created  the  well-known  fish- 
eries of  Watertown  and  Brighton,  discontinued  since  1860.  The  fall  was 
the  origin  of  the  fisheries,  since  the  fish  could  not  pass  it  on  their  way  to 
spawning-ground.  The  fisheries  were  here  when  Roger  Clapp  came, 
and  he  shared  the  product  of  these  fisheries  with  the  Indians,  in  exchange  for 
biscuit — an  incident  appropriately  signalized  in  a  familiar  escutcheon  in  your 
town  history.  Clapp  was  the  first  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Colony,  in  1630, 
to  ascend  the  Charles  beyond  Charlestown. 


6  WATERTOWN     THE     SITE     OF     NORUMBEGA. 

All  these  stone  works  are  built  of  what  are  called  rolling-stone.  Some 
of  them  are  tons  in  weight.  These  remains  are  in  keeping  with  the  cartog- 
raphy which  I  have  left  for  your  inspection.  They  are  in  keeping  with  the 
historic  paper  of  Hakluyt.  They  are  in  Iveeping  with  the  latitudes  of 
Allefoiisce  and  Thevet.  I  believe  they  are  the  remains  of  the  ancient  city 
of  Norumbega.     Let  me  express  what  seems  to  me  self-evident. 

He  who,  taking  all  things  into  account,  still  doubts  that  here  was  the 
site  of  Norumbega — of  the  ancient  seaport,  on  the  Charles — has  the  burden 
of  accounting  in  the  writings  of  the  Puritans,  for  these  miles  of  walls,  still 
standing,  without  mortar,  and  wholly  composed  of  field  boulders.  In  regard 
to  the  period  of  their  construction,  from  the  dawn  of  English  colonization  in 
America,  history  is  silent. 

The  last  question  is  — 


WHO   BUILT  AND   OCCUPIED   THE   CITY    OF   NORUMBEGA? 

To  this  I  called  your  attention  a  year  ago,  on  the  occasion  when  you 
did  me  the  honor  to  come  together  in  the  Town  Hall,  to  attend  a  special 
meeting  of  the  American  Geographical  Society,  convened  to  hear  the  story 
of  Norumbega. 

The  answer  to  this  question  covers  also  the  question  of  Vineland. 
Leif  passed  a  winter  in  Vineland,  where  the  shortest  day  was  nine  hours 
long — that  is,  it  was  four  and  a  half  hours  on  either  side  of  midday,  and  this 
gives  to  astronomical  calculation,  according  to  Prof.  Bugge  of  the  University 
of  Copenhagen,  a  latitude  of  42  deg.  20  min. — the  latitude  of  Boston.  Leif 's 
house,  the  site  of  which  I  predicted  more  than  a  year  before  1  thought  to 
look  for  remains  of  the  house,  was  in  42  deg.  22  min.  22  sec.  The  Vineland 
of  Leif's  time  was  the  place  of  early  Settlement  of  the  Northmen: — as  the 


WATERTOWN    THE     SITE     OF    NORUMBEGA.  7 

region  of  Norumbega  was,  later,  the  Province  of  the  Northmen.  The  site 
of  Leif's  house  and  the  site  of  Norumbega  were  scarcely  three  miles  apart. 

In  the  collection  of  maps  which  I  leave  for  a  while  with  the  Secretary, 
you  will  find  that  this  region  was  the  earliest  New  France.  It  was  the  Gallia 
of  Verrazano,  1524,  in  the  region  occupied  by  the  Breton  French  when  John 
Cabot  made  his  Landfall  on  Cape  Ann  in  1497.  It  was  the  Terra  Corterealis 
of  1500,  the  Arambe  of  Ayllon  of  1520,  and  the  Land  of  Gomez  of  1526. 

You  will  find,  as  you  glance  at  the  maps,  how  it  came  about  that  the 
French  diplomats,  according  to  Mr.  Bancroft,  always  held  that  Boston  was 
in  the  original  New  France. 

You  will  also  find  that  in  this  New  France  was  the  province  of  Norvega, 
which  is  the  same  name,  precisely,  as  that  on  another  map  by  the  same  map- 
maker,  of  the  northernmost  country  of  Europe, —  Norvega.  He  gives  the 
name  in  the  same  kind  of  capital  letter  on  both  maps.  Whoever  prepared 
one  of  the  charts  for  Solis,  the  engraver  of  both  maps  (Seville,  1598),  was 
palpably  familiar  with  the  story  of  the  Vineland  Sagas.  Its  details  of  names 
and  outline  wonderfully  fit  the  region  as  given  on  the  map.  The  Icelandic 
word  Hop  describes  the  ancient  Boston  Back  Bay.  Vigfusson  defines  Hop 
to  be — A  small  land-locked  hay,  salt  at  flood  tide  and  fresh  at  ehh.  Thor- 
finn  mentions  the  great  Islands  at  the  entrance  to  Boston  Harbor,  which 
appear  on  all  the  early  maps,  where  Cohasset  in  various  languages  is  called 
the  "Cape  of  Many  Islands."  Carenas,  the  heir  of  the  Kjalarnes  of  Thorwald 
and  Thorfinn,  appears  on  the  map  of  New  France,  which  contains  Norvega; 
and  Claudia,  a  name  marking  the  early  province  of  missionary  effort,  ap- 
pears on  that  and  also  on  that  which  contains  the  Norvega  of  Europe. 
Norvega  in  Europe  has  the  geographical  place  of  our  Norway  in  Europe. 

Norvega  is  philologically  Norbega  or  Norbegia,  and  so  appears  on  a 
great  number  of  maps  in  my  possession.  The  v  and  h  are  equivalents.  Of 
this  I  could  give  vou  manv  illustrations: 


8  WATERTOWN    THE     SITE     OF     KORUMBEGA. 

Our  Silver  is  the  Silber  of  the  Germans. 

Our  Cavalier  is  the  Caballero  of  the  Spaniard. 

The  Cavo  of  the  Portuguese  is  the  Cabo  of  the  Spaniard. 

Balboa  and  Valboa  are  the  same. 

Marvil  Head  and  Marblehead  were  interchangeable  in  our  early  history. 

Norvega  differs  little  from  Norvegr,  one  of  the  earliest  names  of  Norway 
in  Scandinavian  literature.  Rafn,  the  author  of  the  Antiquitates  Ameri- 
canae,  translates  Norvegr  into  the  Latin  Norvegia. 

Larousse  says  "Norvegia  or  Norbegia." 

Norvega  and  Norhega  are  the  same. 

The  Indians  of  this  region  could  not  utter  h  without  putting  an  m  before 
it.  I  have  maps — having  on  them  Noero  mbega,  Nere  'mbega,  Norom- 
bega,  Norimbega,  Naranbergue,  Nuremberga,  Norimbega,  and  many  other 
modes  of  spelling  the  name.  In  my  collection  of  maps  there  are  some  forty 
different  forms  of  the  name  of  Norumbega. 

Several  of  thein,  as  you  will  observe,  showed  in  the  printing  the  sus- 
pended utterance  before  the  6. 

From  these  various  forms  of  the  name  to  Norumbega,  is,  to  the  student 
of  philological  and  dialectical  equivalents,  not  far. 

The  province  bore  the  name  of  the  home  country,  as  we  have  New 
Spain,  New  Prance,  New  Holland,  Nova  Scotia,  New  England,  New  Belgium 
and  New  Sweden,  in  this  country,  bearing  the  names  of  the  parent  countries 
from  which  the  early  settlers  or  discoverers  came. 

Please  hold  in  your  memory  that  Solis — the  best  cartographer  of  all 
in  the  sixteenth  century  who  made  maps  of  this  region — has  left  us  a 
chart  wholly  in  keeping  with  the  Vineland  story;  and  this  chart  plainly 
says,  in  the  language  of  cartography,  that  the  valley  of  the  Charles  was 
colonized  by   the  Northmen,   and   in    that  valley,    within    the  province  of 


WATERTOWN     THE     SITE     OF    NORUMBEGA.  9 

Norvega  and  in  the  country  of  the  original  New  France,  which  held  the  site 
of  the  city  of  Boston,  he  has  placed  the  city  of  Norumbega. 

To  minds  constituted  like  mine,  the  conviction  is  irresistible  that  the 
city  of  Norumbega  was  in  a  province  of  Norway, — a  district,  so-called, 
settled  by  Northmen, — and  on  the  banks  of  the  Charles. 


VINELAND. 

Now  let  us  look  at  the  name  Vineland  as  applied  to  the  country  to 
which  the  early  Northmen  came.  The  name  was  given  by  Leif  Erikson  in 
compliment  to  the  grape  vines  which  he  found  here. 

Let  us  see  if  this  name  has  been  preserved. 

You  are  all  familiar  with  Vineyard  Sound  and  Martha's  Vineyard 
and  Vineyard  Haven.  These  are  names  in  use  by  men  of  Eng- 
lish descent.  But  two  hundred  and  seventy-five  years  ago,  the  Dutch 
explorers  were  on  our  coast.  You  will  find  in  the  collection  of  maps 
of  which  I  have  spoken,  a  Dutch  map  of  1616,  and  another  of  1671, 
on  which  in  place  of  Vineyard  appears  Weingaerts  or  Wyngaerts — Wein- 
gaerts  Hoek  and  Wyngaerts  Eylandt,  etc.  These  are  Dutch  equivalents 
of  Vineyard  or  Vinyard. 

But  earlier  still — 1604 — Champlain  translated  the  name  into  liberal 
French  and  called  one  of  the  points  Bacchus  Island — which  another  French- 
man distinguished  "by  giving  the  two  names  "Bacchus  or  Wyngaerden  Ey- 
landt.'' Now  Wyngaerten  Eylandt  is  the  Dutch  for  Vineland  Island,  thus 
distinguished,  as  many  geographers  of  the  time  believed,  as  one  of  the  cluster 
of  islands  making  up  what  was  later  recognized  by  all  to  be  a  continent.  The 
King  of  Denmark  spoke  to  Adam  of  Bremen  in  the  11th  century  of  Vineland 
as  one  of  several  islands.     This  Eylandt  was,  therefore,  Vineland. 


10  WATERTOWN    THE     SITE    OF     NORUMBEGA. 

Still  another  Frenchman  gave  the  name  Vingaerts  Eylan  against  Cam- 
bridge, the  very  site  of  Leif's  house.  Earlier  still  Verrazano  had  given  the 
name  of  Norman  Villa,  Northman's  House,  to  the  same  point — a  spot  which  I 
have  identified  on  the  Charles.  A  little  later  Gomez  kidnapped  in  Boston 
Bay  —  where  he  found  the  name  Norumbega  —  and  carried  away  to 
slavery  fifty  of  the  trusting  natives, —  which  doubtless  led  to  the  law 
among  them, — according  to  Allefousce — that  condemned  to  death  every 
man  captured  in  Boston  Harbor,  who  had  a  black  beard.  The  scene  of  this 
atrocity  and  the  jurisdiction  over  which  this  law  prevailed  was  in  Norum- 
bega,— in  Vineland.     Was  there  old  Norse  vengeance  in  the  blood? 

Champlain  came  to  throw  a  cloud  over  the  site  of  Norumbega,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  17th  century.  He  saw  what  was  pointed  out  to  him 
as  remains  of  the  ancient  city,  but  could  not  believe  it.  Some  years 
earlier  Englishmen  had  visited  the  city.  In  1583  Stephen  Bellinger 
of  Rouen  told  Hakluyt,  as  related  in  "Western  Planting,"  of  his 
visit  to  the  city  of  Norumbega,  where  he  found  great  collections  of 
peltry  and  other  articles  of  commerce  ;  and  counted  eighty  houses  still 
standing  ;  and  less  than  fifteen  years  earlier — 1569 — Ingram  was  here  and 
found  a  city  three  quartei's  of  a  mile  long.  He  sailed  soon  after,  from  the 
Bay  of  St.  Mary's — well  known  and  on  numerous  maps  as  an  early  name 
of  Boston  Harbor,  but  a  few  hours  distant  from  Norumbega. 

Of  the  discovery  of  the  Vineland  of  the  Northmen,  which,  as  you  may 
see,  preceded  Norumbega,  but  occupied,  as  later  recognized,  the  same  region, 
time  will  not  permit  me  to  say  more  than  a  word. 

My  paper  on  the  subject  is  nearly  through  the  press,  as  well  as  the 
other  to  which  I  have  alluded  on  the  "Defences  of  Norumbega."  If  one  could 
only  stop  finding  new  things,  in  such  unexplored  and  prolific  fields,  he 
might  promise  the  date  of  publication  with  more  precision. 


WATERTOWN    THE    SITE     OF    NORUMBEGA.  11 

I  regret  much  that,  for  this  want  of  time,  I  cannot  go  a  little  into  the 
details  of  demonstration  that  Leif  Erikson  landed  first  at  Cape  Cod  and  then 
came  to  Boston  Harbor ;  ran  aground  on  an  ebb  tide,  and  with  the  flood  tide 
floated  up  the  Charles  to  the  first  convenient  landing  place,  and  built 
his  house  near  the  Cambridge  City  Hospital, — the  site  and  remains  of  which 
I  have  had  the  honor  to  point  out  to  some  of  my  friends  here  present.  It 
is  a  rather  long  story,  but  it  will  all  appear  at  no  distant  date. 

Let  me  add  to  what  I  have  said,  as  to  who  were  the  inhabitants  of  this 
region,  the  record  of  Peter  Martyr,  that  all  through  this  region  were  white 
men,  having  yellow  hair,  such  as  was  found  by  the  Pilgrims  in  1620  in  the 
grave  of  a  man  buried  on  Cape  Cod.  These  white  men  narrated  stories  and 
sang  songs  in  their  households  (a  usage  of  the  Northmen),  and  kept  chick- 
ens, ducks  and  geese, — had  herds  of  deer,  which  wandered  through  the  fields 
and  woods  by  day, — of  which  herds,  the  does  came  home  at  evening  to  their 
fawns,  and  permitted  themselves  to  be  milked.  Such  was  the  relation  to 
Peter  Martyr  by  the  Spanish  explorer  Ay  lion,  who  told  of  Norumbega  and  Co- 
hasset  and  Saco  and  Chicorua  and  the  stretch  of  coast  far  to  the  north,  in  1520. 
Over  this  Norumbega,  of  which  he  heard  as  Arambe,  and  many  other  regions 
whose  names  he  learned,  A3dlon  was  made  Adelantado — Governor — by  the 
Spanish  crown.  You  will  find  Norumbega  on  Peter  Martyr's  map — as 
Arembi — the  abbreviation  of  Arambec — the  dialectic  equivalent  of  Norambec 
— of  Norumbega.     It  is  situated  on  the  river  Gamas — the  Charles. 

Of  these  white  people  Verrazano  writes  in  his  letter  to  the  King  in 
1524  ;  and  Jacques  Cartier  in  1534-35.     (D'Avezac's  Life  of  Cartier.) 

But  we  have  a  nearer  testimony  with  which  you  are  familiar — to  use 
an  Hibernicism — without  knowing  it.  I  have  discussed  it  at  length  else- 
where, and  can  only  allude  to  it  here. 

The  great  King  Philip,  the  son  of  the  Good  Massasoit,  was  a  Wampan- 
oag,   and  his  home   was  on  Narragansett  Bay.      Now,   the  Wampanoags 


12  WATERTOWN    THE     SITE     OF     NOEUMBEGA. 

were  the  people  of  Wamp-an-akke — the  White-Man's-land.  Wamp  is 
"white"  (Roger  Williams);  an  is  "man," — abbr.  of  anini — (Heckewelder)  ; 
and  akke  is  "land."  The  White-Man's-land  was  the  Huitra-Manna-land  of 
the  Sagas,  the  land  mentioned  by  Thorfinn  as  being  near  to  Vineland,  and 
was,  not  improbably,  the  land  which  Verrazano  visited  and  described,  in  41 
deo".  40  min.  on  Narragansett  Bay,  where  he  found  white  men.  and  which 
to-dav  holds  the  ancient  Newport  Tower. 


